Ahead of this year’s midterm elections, President Donald Trump is already starting to endorse some GOP candidates – including three-time MLB All-Star Mark Teixeira.

In a post on X, Teixeira shared a screenshot from President Trump’s Truth Social post, where he endorses the former World Series champ in March 3’s Republican primary for Texas’ 21st Congressional district.

‘I know Mark well, and is he a TOTAL WINNER, on and off the field,’ Trump wrote in his post.

Teixeira, who won a World Series with the Yankees in 2009, said he had ‘an excellent phone call with the President’ and that he’s ‘excited to be part of the team.’

Teixeira played 14 MLB seasons for the Texas Rangers, Atlanta Braves, Los Angeles Angels and Yankees, retiring after the 2016 campaign.

Trump’s endorsements have often resulted in wins. In 2016, Trump endorsed four Senators and two Representatives, all of whom won except Kelly Ayotte (R-New Hampshire). In 2017, every politician running for a spot in the House of Representatives that Trump endorsed won. More recently, in 2024, only six of the House candidates he endorsed lost their elections. He endorsed more than 50 candidates in total.

What is Mark Teixeira running for?

Teixeira is running for Congress in Texas’ 21st district. Teixeira’s opportunity comes after the district’s sitting congressman, Republican Chip Roy, revealed he would be running for Texas Attorney General in 2026. Roy had held the position since 2018, winning re-election in 2020, 2022, and 2024.

Since announcing his candidacy, Teixeira has always made it clear that he has been a Trump supporter. In his announcement post, he even claims he’s ‘ready to help defend President Trump’s America First agenda.’

When are midterm elections?

This year’s Congressional elections (also referred to as midterms) are set for Tuesday, November 3. The Texas primary will be March 3, 2026, and a primary runoff is set for May 26, 2026.

The Detroit Tigers are well-positioned to triumph in the land of the indifferent.

All it took was one handshake with Framber Valdez and a short-term commitment to the left-hander to ensure the 2026 Tigers will be significant favorites in the American League Central, where five teams worth a combined $8 billion typically engage in an annual ritual of seeing who can do less.

The Tigers decided to zag: While the modern fan has been conditioned into the loser mindset of ‘you better trade a guy before you get nothing,’ Detroit instead took the more appropriate tack of surrounding Tarik Skubal with another elite arm in his almost certainly final year in Motown.

And they even locked up a replacement when he walks. Novel, isn’t it?

In signing Valdez to a three-year, $115.5 million contract, the Tigers immediately trot out the AL’s most dominant 1-2 punch, a duo perhaps rivaled in Boston or Toronto or Seattle but still can’t match the raw dominance of possessing the game’s most dominant pitchers and also one of its rocks.

Skubal won his arbitration case against the Tigers, earning a $32 million salary compared to the Tigers’ $19 million bid. His greatness is well-documented. Valdez’s is a little sneakier, his greatest value coming in the 180 to 200 excellent innings he typically provides every season. Lest we forget, he was the lead blocker in the 2022 Astros’ push to the World Series title, going 3-0 with a 1.44 ERA, the Astros winning all four of his starts.

Certainly, a late-season kerfuffle involving his catcher might have dampened his value on the market a tad, but that’s the Tigers’ gain. And besides, his $38.3 million deal is still the largest per annum for a left-handed free agent.

You’d think stretching for a free agent prize might be out of the Tigers’ realm. Then again, memories are short, and baseball’s bean counters seem to like it this way.

This is a franchise that once extended future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander on a $202 million deal and also fellow Cooperstown lock Miguel Cabrera on a $292 million pact. Amid all that, they saw fit to sign free agent pitcher Jordan Zimmermann to a five-year, $110 million deal.

That came in November 2015. Have baseball’s revenues increased since then? (Don’t answer that).

The Tigers played the Verlander situation perfectly, trading him when they realized a down cycle was imminent. And unlike Skubal, Verlander had two to three years of club control remaining when he was dealt to Houston.

Detroit’s franchise-altering return haul? Franklin Perez, Daz Cameron and Jake Rogers.

While Tigers owner Chris Illitch is not nearly as win-now as father Mike once was, the basic fact remains: A dollar goes a long way in the Central. This is a division where the biggest-market team (Chicago) has never spent more than $75 million on a free agent, where Cleveland likes to pretend any star unwilling to sign a below-market extension must hit the trading block after three years, where Kansas City will nip around the edges until strong-arming any municipality that will have them into a new ballpark, where Minnesota takes on new investors and rotates family members as ‘control people’ and overturns its front office as if it doesn’t have the greatest ballpark in the division.

No, opportunity is ripe and as we know, consistent access to the playoffs is the most important piece to winning a World Series. Signing Valdez – who can opt out of his deal after the 2027 season – and pairing him with Skubal almost guarantees the Tigers an October ticket, and a favorable set-up when they get there.

Even if it’s just one year, what an opportunity. And the Tigers can always come back and reassemble after Skubal leaves. The door should still be left wide open.

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Mikaela Shiffrin’s grief after her father died was so great her mother didn’t think the all-time World Cup wins leader would ever ski again.

‘Mikaela laid with her head on his chest for nine hours, I think,’ Eileen Shiffrin said in a new episode of adidas’ Illuminated docuseries that was released Thursday, Feb. 5.

‘We ended up having to withdraw support and she heard his heart stop beating,’ Eileen Shiffrin said. ‘That’s a hard thing to go through.’

The episode is filmed mostly at Shiffrin’s house in Colorado, which is filled with pictures of her father. It also features family videos of Shiffrin when she was young, with her parents and early in her skiing career.

For days after Jeff Shiffrin’s death, Shiffrin couldn’t get out of bed, her mother said. She couldn’t eat or drink, and she lost weight.

‘We lost our rock, the person that we all loved the most,’ Eileen Shiffrin said in the episode, as a young Shiffrin is seen with her dad. ‘I didn’t think Mikaela would ever ski again. I don’t think she thought she would, either.

‘We were constantly looking for signs of Jeff’s presence. She (said), ‘I’m just foggy. I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t really feel like I know what I’m doing,” Eileen Shiffrin recalled. ‘I said, ‘We don’t have to ski anymore, but we need to do something besides sit at home. So if you want, we can try skiing and maybe you would go on the hill and feel dad there?”

The rest of the 2019-20 season was canceled because of the COVID epidemic. Shiffrin went to Europe that fall for the start of the World Cup circuit, only to injure her back. She didn’t race again until November 2020.

‘There was this crazy battle between I don’t really want to be here or existing, but I still like ski racing, and I still am good at it, and I still want to win races,’ Shiffrin said.

Shiffrin has spoken often of not having her usual store of energy that had made her so formidable in the second runs of tech races. But that heaviness gradually lifted, each day bringing her a little closer to where she’d been before her father died.

On Dec. 14, 2020, Shiffrin won the giant slalom in Courchevel, France. It was her first win since Jeff Shiffrin’s death.

Shiffrin would win three more times that season, including the combined title at the world championships in Cortina, site of the women’s Alpine races at the 2026 Winter Olympics. She also won a silver in the giant slalom at those worlds, as well as bronzes in the slalom and super-G.

‘Winning was just sort of the statement, the proof that, ‘Oh, I’ve got fire. I’m just trying to figure out who I am again,” Shiffrin said.

The 16-minute episode is a sweet and revealing look at the relationship between Shiffrin and her mother, who has been by her side for her entire career. Shiffrin has often praised her mother, who also was a ski racer when she was younger, for knowing her skiing as well as anyone and being able to identify things others cannot.

‘I love feeling like there’s something I still have to offer that only I can give to her. It’s just still magical and special,’ Eileen Shiffrin said in the docuseries. ‘Knowing us, I don’t think we’re going to stop anytime soon.’

After months of speculation, we now know where Giannis Antetokounmpo will be – at least through the end of the 2025-26 season.

According to ESPN, the Bucks have informed other teams that they are keeping Antetokounmpo on the roster beyond the NBA trading deadline, which is Thursday, Feb. 5 at 3 p.m. ET.

This doesn’t rule out that Milwaukee could eventually trade Antetokounmpo during the offseason when potential suitors would have more draft capital and financial flexibility to sweeten their offers. But it also opens the path for the Bucks to try to make complementary moves to convince Antetokounmpo to commit to the franchise over the long term.

Antetokounmpo, 31, is signed through the end of next season and has a $62.8 million player option for the 2027-28 season. In theory, the Bucks would want to secure Antetokounmpo’s future with a multiyear extension, but if they get any indication that he’s not committed to signing a deal, they eventually might consider a trade to recoup assets for a post-Giannis era.

Antetokounmpo is averaging 28 points, 10 rebounds and 5.6 assists per game, though he is currently sidelined with a right calf strain and is expected to miss several more weeks.

Antetokounmpo has had an eventful season with the Bucks.

Recently, he booed home fans at Fiserv Forum after they had booed the team’s performance. Earlier in the year, he scrubbed his social media of most mentions of the Bucks, leading to the rampant speculation that he was looking to be traded.

According to multiple reports, Antetokounmpo broached his future with Bucks management through his representatives, but he addressed the rumors and said ‘there will never be a moment that I will come out and say, ‘I want a trade.” In mid-December, however, he didn’t rule out that his agent might be having conversations about his future with the Bucks.

Antetokounmpo has maintained that he wants to compete for a championship, but the Bucks (20-29) are languishing in the East.

‘We’re not playing hard,’ Antetokounmpo told reporters Jan. 21 after a 20-point loss against the Oklahoma City Thunder. ‘We’re not doing the right thing. We’re not playing to win. We’re not playing together. Our chemistry is not there. Guys are being selfish, trying to look for their own shots instead of looking for the right shot for the team. Guys trying to do it on their own.

‘At times, I feel like when we’re down 10, down 15, down 20, we try to make it up in one play, and it’s not going to work – we’ve just got to keep on chipping away, possession by possession.’

Projecting the NFL’s top award winners isn’t quite as difficult as determining who will take home an Academy Award.

While voting for honorees in inherently subjective categories can create some level of variance, the extensive sample size of a 17-game regular-season allows for some clear favorites to emerge for each honor. And while there have been a few surprises over the years, the pre-Super Bowl NFL Honors ceremony typically serves as a coronation for candidates, with the results locked in some time ago.

Nevertheless, with this year’s NFL Honors set to take place Feb. 5 in San Francisco, here is USA TODAY Sports’ rundown of what to expect with our predicted winners in each category:

NFL MVP: Matthew Stafford

Last year gave rise to a rare stir when apparent frontrunner Lamar Jackson lost out to Josh Allen despite claiming the first-team All-Pro nod at quarterback from the same voting panel. It doesn’t seem like similar drama is in store this time around. Stafford and Drake Maye created a healthy – and then unhealthy – debate, but the Los Angeles Rams quarterback seems positioned to beat out the New England Patriots’ second-year signal-caller after winning the first-team All-Pro battle 31-18 (Josh Allen received one vote). Maybe New England’s favorable schedule played a factor, though it’s questionable how much of an advantage that actually conferred on Maye given that the greatest benefit seemed to come from facing subpar quarterbacks. At 37, Stafford still discovered new peaks in his play, particularly in continuing to unlock explosive downfield connections while seldom putting the ball in harm’s way.

Offensive Player of the Year: Jaxon Smith-Njigba

The postseason doesn’t factor into awards consideration, so the Seattle Seahawks’ Super Bowl run – and the receiver’s dominant outing over the Rams in the NFC championship game – won’t come into play here. No matter for Smith-Njigba, who should still claim this honor. The third-year pass catcher was central to Seattle’s effort to reimagine its offense in coach Mike Macdonald’s second season, with Smith-Njigba repeatedly delivering huge gains off play-action. His 1,793 receiving yards not only paced the NFL but were three times the total of any other player on the Seahawks’ roster. Rams receiver Puka Nacua made a legitimate run for this award and even bested Smith-Njigba in yards per route run. But Smith-Njigba gets the narrow edge given his outsized importance to his team.

Defensive Player of the Year: Myles Garrett

There’s no mystery as to whether the Cleveland Browns defensive end will earn this recognition for the second time in his career. The only outstanding question is whether he will become only the second player to do so unanimously. After breaking the NFL’s single-season sack record with 23, Garrett might be impossible to deny, as all the other finalists are pass rushers who can’t measure up to his historic levels of disruption. His singular status was only reinforced by the lengths that opposing teams went to in the final four weeks of the season to prevent him from reaching the sack record.

Offensive Rookie of the Year: Tetairoa McMillan

This has been arguably the most difficult award to track over the course of the season. Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Emeka Egubka claimed early front-runner status with his sizzling start, but he cooled off down the stretch. Preseason favorites Cam Ward and Ashton Jeanty couldn’t overcome their teams’ respective deficiencies to remain in front of the pack. Instead, McMillan made a steady but sustainable surge by powering an otherwise listless Carolina Panthers passing attack with 1,014 receiving yards and seven touchdowns. New Orleans Saints rookie quarterback Tyler Shough created some intrigue down the stretch, but his performance in nine starts likely wasn’t sufficient to overcome McMillan’s more robust body of work.

Defensive Rookie of the Year: Carson Schwesinger

Splash plays have routinely been the key in first-year defenders establishing a name for themselves, thereby making this award the territory of edge rushers and cornerbacks. Schwesinger, however, looks poised to become just the second off-ball linebacker in the last decade to emerge as a winner. As a second-round pick of the Browns, the former walk-on at UCLA continued to outshine some of his more lauded peers, establishing himself as a rangy and dependable asset to the defense with a team-high 156 tackles. Seahawks safety Nick Emmanwori finished the season as perhaps the most dangerous first-year defender, while edge rushers Abdul Carter and James Pearce Jr. each made a distinct mark. But Schwesinger set the bar with his consistent level of stellar play.

Comeback Player of the Year: Christian McCaffrey

No other award has as nebulous criteria as this one. In some years, that’s made it hard to get a handle on a potential winner. This year, things seem fairly straightforward. Detroit Lions defensive end Aidan Hutchinson has a strong case, but McCaffrey, who also is a finalist for MVP and Offensive Player of the Year, bounced back to form for the San Francisco 49ers after missing all but four games last year due to two separate ailments. Long an outlier at a position that has been devalued since his arrival into the league, McCaffrey should add another impressive line to his extensive resume with this award.

Coach of the Year: Mike Vrabel

No category is as loaded as this one, as any finalist would make a fine winner in any given year. And though the postseason doesn’t carry any weight for this award, it’s fitting that it might come down to Vrabel and Mike Macdonald, the Patriots coach’s Super Bowl 60 counterpart with the Seahawks. While Ben Johnson and Liam Coen engineered incredible single-season turnarounds, Vrabel became just the third coach in league history to win 14 games in his first year with a franchise – and he did so with a roster that had its fair share of faults even after an extensive offseason reconfiguration. Expect something of a splintered vote here, with 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan also getting strong consideration for his work navigating a disastrous run of injuries. But Vrabel’s record-tying 10-win improvement in Year 1 likely puts him over the top.

Assistant Coach of the Year: Klint Kubiak

After a run of admittedly chalk picks, maybe there’s some mystery in the final few awards, which lack any consensus surrounding them. Denver Broncos defensive coordinator Vance Joseph could be the pick here after leading the way for the NFL’s most fearsome pass rush, and Josh McDaniels did superlative work in positioning Maye and the rest of the Patriots’ offense to thrive despite some lingering personnel limitations. Kubiak, however, was at the controls for one of this year’s most impressive reworkings with Seattle’s offense, and the unit managed to pull off the high-wire act thanks to his guidance.

Protector of the Year: Joe Thuney

Finally, the offensive linemen get their due. The finalists here make for an intriguing group, with Trent Williams and some other more visible names not in the mix. While a committee of former blocking greats has been instructed only to take into account this season, Thuney would make for a fitting inaugural winner given his accomplished career. But choosing him wouldn’t be a mere reflection of his body of work, as the first-team All-Pro left guard didn’t surrender a sack this season and played an instrumental role in stabilizing a formerly shaky front for Caleb Williams. This one, however, could truly go in any direction.

Former NFL cornerback Asante Samuel’s bio on social media website X is ‘Professional S— Talker.’ He backed that claim up with a string of posts targeting former teammate Tom Brady on Feb. 4.

Samuel called out the former New England Patriots quarterback for saying he wasn’t going to root for the Patriots in Super Bowl 60 on the latest episode of his ‘Let’s Go!’ podcast. Brady said he didn’t ‘have a dog in the fight in this one’ and will just be rooting for a good game between his former team and the Seattle Seahawks.

‘Tom Brady I am highly I mean highly disappointed in you not rooting for your ex teammate, (current Patriots head coach) Mike Vrabel who is about to do something special,’ Samuel wrote in one post on X.

Note: Samuel’s posts contain language that may be sensitive for some readers.

About 15 minutes later, Samuel followed up with another post.

‘Brady you can’t be the only one winning super bowls. Let me find out you hating on (Patriots starting quarterback) Drake Maye and Vrabel,’ he wrote. ”I don’t have a dog in this fight’ Not what I wanted to hear. Brady knows how I get down. This ain’t nothing new to him.’

Four hours after his second post ripping into Brady, Samuel posted twice more, calling the former Patriots quarterback ‘Flaw A– Brady’ and giving him 23 hours to respond, threatening to go ‘ape (expletive) about who you are.’

Samuel, 45, won two Super Bowls with Brady, Vrabel and the Patriots early in his playing career. He was a four-time Pro Bowler and member of the 2007 All-Pro first team in his final season with New England.

After five years with the Patriots, he played four seasons with the Eagles and two with the Falcons. Samuel finished his 11-year career after 2013 with 51 interceptions, a category in which he led the NFL in 2006 (10 interceptions) and 2009 (9).